The downside of youth and inexperience reared its head last week in Apalachee’s season-opening loss to River Ridge.
Quarterback Gino Portera threw two touchdown passes and ran for two more while Alex Beltran added three touchdown runs as the Knights rolled to a 54-13 win over the Wildcats on Friday in Woodstock.
It was far from an ideal start to the season for Apalachee coach Steve Sims and his team.
“They’re a senior-laden team and we’re not,” Sims said. “We had 10 guys on defense make their first varsity start and it showed.
“We’ve got a lot of things to work through. They broke a few long plays and we just don’t have the speed right now to stop someone if they get through the front seven. We’ve got to find a way limit those type of plays to 15-yard gains instead of 80-yard runs.”
The main bright spots for the Wildcats came on a 1-yard quarterback sneak for a touchdown by AJ Millbrooks and a 14-yard touchdown pass from AJ Forbing to Shaan Cook. But there were offensive struggles as well. River Ridge’s Chris Long had a 32-yard interception return for a score that added to the rout.
“We had some ball exchange issues we’ve got to address and we’ve got to be able to take care of the football,” Sims said. “Turnovers and interceptions are never good. If we can cut those out, we’ve got a much better chance to get in the game.”
Apalachee will look to turn its fortune around Friday when it hosts Union Grove at 7:30 p.m.
The Wolverines, a GHSA Class AAAAA team, are off to an 0-2 start with losses to Woodland, Stockbridge (42-0) and Whitewater (25-17) last week.
It will be a rematch of two teams that tied 22-22 last year in McDonough.
“They probably won’t be super explosive, but they’re coached well and they’re pretty methodical in what they do,” Sims said. “They’ve got a little bit of size up front defensively and are pretty good on the offensive line as well. They’ve got some talented defensive backs that could give us trouble. But I think right now we need to be able to focus on correcting our mistakes. Hopefully we can take care of the football a little bit better and keep things close going into the fourth quarter.
“It’ll be nice to be at home after a long road trip last week. Maybe it’ll help us be a little more relaxed and play a little bit better.”

E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:

Phone*

What is zero plus one?

Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry

Submitted comments will be subject to moderation before being displayed.